Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer”: A Short Story About the Use of Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity) To Write Fiction

The story is narrated in the first person by a young ship’s captain, who, having just taken command of a new ship (a blank page), is at sea. The captain (writer) is suddenly confronted with a man (a character) who seems to come out of nowhere (having fled another ship after killing someone). The captain hides the man in his cabin until the ship nears an island where the fugitive character can live after the story is over.

Once the character introduces himself (“My name is Leggatt”), he is never again referred to by name. Instead, the captain refers to him—over and over again, throughout the story—as follows: “It was…as though I had been faced by my own reflection in…a…mirror,” “my double,” “my double,” “my double,” “ghost,” “my double,” “other self,” “my double,” “my other self,” “my double,” “my secret self,” “a ghost,” “my double,” “my second self,” “my second self,” “my double,” “my secret double,” “my second self,” “my second self,” “my very own self,” “my double,” “my second self,” “the secret stranger,” “my other self,” and “my second self.” 

If the story had been primarily about a fugitive who is given a second chance, it would not have been titled “The Secret Sharer.” The story is about a writer, just starting out on a new writing voyage, who suddenly meets a character. And the character, we are repeatedly and endlessly told, is actually another personality state of the writer. That is, the writer has, and uses, multiple personality to create the narrative.

To refer to a person who has multiple personality as a “secret sharer” is very appropriate, since multiple personality is, normally, hidden and secret. Conrad’s insight is that fiction writers, in their use of multiple personality to write fiction, are secret sharers.